


The Oldest Quest Under the Sun

by RhysLahey



Series: Scisaac short fics [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Christmas Special, Christmas fic, Comedy, F/M, Idiots in Love, Isaac runs a pub, M/M, Moira Rose cameo, Scott and Isaac - Disaster Duo, Scott moved to England with his mother, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28213875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhysLahey/pseuds/RhysLahey
Summary: Isaac and his brother run a small pub in a small village in England. Scott helps them in the kitchen. Everything is great until the night of the Winter Solstice, when a mysterious visitor walks into the pub after midnight...
Relationships: Camden Lahey/Lydia Martin, Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall
Series: Scisaac short fics [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960519
Comments: 20
Kudos: 10





	1. Prologue: Bonfire night

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my odd version of a Christmas fic, which is not *really* about Christmas itself, though, but it addresses the original, universal meaning of all solstitial celebrations. It is heavily influenced by _The Hogfather_ by Terry Pratchett (which if you haven't read, you definitely should, and there's a TV adaptation as well?).
> 
> As always, i_dont_want_to_tell_you_my_name is responsible for making sure that this is readable and that the story is up to standard!

“Why do you have fireworks in November?” Scott asked again. He knew the answer already, but he did it only to moan about the cold and the mist, and so Isaac would explain it all again.

Isaac did not mind.

“It’s not about the fireworks. It’s all about the bonfires,” Isaac explained with a smile.

“Well, the fireworks are part of it too,” Camden nudged his brother as he pulled a beer can from his bag and passed the rest around.

“We commemorate Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up Parliament,” Lydia added, passing on the beers. “We light a big fire and have fireworks.”

“I don’t understand why you don’t have them in the summer,” Scott chuckled. “Like _normal_ people.”

Isaac pushed him sideways as they both laughed. Lydia looked at Camden knowingly, and both rolled their eyes.

As an American, there were many things that Scott was curious about Britain, even if he had been living there for a while already. It all began a few months back, when his mother, Melissa, gave up her job as a nurse to become a full-time novelist after her amateur book ( _The Spirit of the Wolf_ ) landed her a big contract. She had decided to move to England, where she thought she could find inspiration for her next big project, although Scott knew that other than looking for inspiration in the English countryside, moving there had also been, partly, a way of avoiding his father. Scott had imagined his mother would have chosen somewhere famous to move to, but he had never expected her to move to a spit of a village called Bleiton-on-the-Water.

Apparently, and according to her quick google search, a small village in rural Oxfordshire was the way to go to become a writer.

Scott was not sure why he followed her to a different country: he had just finished college and had got his degree. Had he wanted to, he could have started a new independent life on his own, but all of his school friends had moved away, so there was nothing tying him back to Beacon Hills. He also did not like the idea of his mother living on her own across the Ocean. So, just when Melissa signed the lease on the house, barely a week before moving, Scott decided to pack his stuff and go with her.

He had always had a vague idea of what Britain was like (mostly based on movies), but experiencing Bleiton was a big shock. The place was not a one-pub village (as the locals liked to point out, there were three), but there was very little else in terms of things to do. There was a couple of shops and a post office. Sometimes they screened movies in the village hall. The village had a large sports field and a number of successful teams, though. Thankfully Oxford was not that far away whenever he needed some city life.

Once settled, Scott thought that it would be easy to get a job as a vet in Bleiton, simply because there were lots of farms, but there was a good supply of veterinarians in the area already. That was a bummer. Not wanting to be a burden for his mother, he took the first job he could find. Luckily for him he had worked in a diner when he was younger, and that is how he became the cook of the Werewolf’s Arms.

The Werewolf’s Arms was the oldest pub in Bleiton. Named after a local legend (which first inspired Melissa to move there), the pub was a thatched-roof building in the centre of the village, on the old Oxford road. It had two main rooms in the front with an eclectic arrangement of stools, chairs and benches. One of the rooms had, moreover, a stone fireplace. There was also a larger and newer dining room at the back. The pub had a long and ancient oak bar with half a dozen old brass taps under an equally ancient, exposed beam which was decorated with pictures of Bleiton’s rugby and cricket teams, old views of the pub, and a number of photographs of past landlords and their families.

This is where the Lahey brothers came in.

For the last hundred and forty or so years, the Werewolf’s Arms had been run by the Davies, even if the pub itself was at least two hundred years older. When William Davies died five years ago, the pub was transferred to his closest living relatives, the two sons of his late sister: Camden and Isaac. Even if the kids had only visited Bleiton occasionally when they were very young, Camden, the eldest, was quick to claim the inheritance and leave their abusive father behind in Swansea, making sure to bring his little brother with him. Ever since, the two brothers had been running the pub quite successfully.

Part of this success was the partnership the two brothers had with Lydia.

Lydia Martin was, technically, a relative of the Lahey brothers, but so distant that nobody knew exactly the degree. The only thing they knew they had in common was that Bleiton was their ancestral family home. With her mother, Lydia was the co-owner of Ben Síde Manor, the farm that supplied the pub with all the fresh produce. She had always been the brightest person in her school, and it came as no surprise when she got a full scholarship to go to Cambridge. Despite the many opportunities she got to go and work (and make big money) in London, she would not let her mother run the farm on her own after the divorce and, with their combined efforts, they turned Ben Síde into an example of modern, ecologic farming. One of the main attractions of the Werewolf’s menu was that it was as seasonal and as local as it could possibly get.

“How does this compare to your fourth of July fireworks?” Isaac asked as he looked at Scott’s face illuminated in the colours of the fireworks.

“Well, we have this big forest in Beacon Hills, but in the summer it gets quite dry, so we have to be very careful with these things,” Scott said, staring at the explosions with a dopey smile. “But they are bigger and better,” he chuckled.

“Show off!” Camden teased only so Scott could do an awkward victory dance.

That particular evening, Scott, Lydia, Camden and Isaac had climbed up to the summit of Carngoch Hill. This was the highest of the hills that flanked Bleiton on the west, and it was famous because it was a great walk from the village through the fields and the oak forests (one that Scott had walked many times). This time, however, the hilltop gave them a perfect view of the village below, the rest of the valley, and the firework display.

The rockets exploded in many colourful ways; some looking like palm trees, some like snowflakes, some simply screeching into the night sky. Cam leant onto Lydia to say something in her ear, and the redhead chuckled and shook her head.

It was no secret that Camden and Lydia were spending a lot of time together outside business hours, and Isaac liked that. Isaac was very definitely happy for his brother, because he had been the one who had sacrificed the most in order to get them both out of their father’s clutches. Cam had left Laura Hale, his girlfriend of many years, behind; he had had to drop off from college, and to turn all of his life around to make sure the two of them could survive while running their mother’s family business. In fact, Isaac could not think of a better match for Cam than Lydia.

Meanwhile, Isaac himself was struggling with what to do about Scott. At that moment, the blond wanted to sit closer to him, but they were already brushing shoulders, and he did not want to push any further. Ever since Scott had walked into the pub to hand in his CV, Isaac knew that the American was going to change his life. Scott had had a few difficult first weeks while trying to familiarise himself with the menu, and he had been late more often than he should, but Isaac had not minded. He had been, in fact, quite grateful that the guy with the megawatt smile and the softest and warmest brown eyes in the world had decided to move to his village and that he had wanted to work in his pub. Isaac treasured every moment he shared with Scott, and he loved how he liked to drop random British expressions he had learnt every now and then. But he was technically Scott’s boss, and that made him uncomfortable.

“Everyone – ready for the big one?” Cam asked with excitement to no one in particular when he sensed the display was coming to an end.

The final display erupted a few seconds later. The four of them wooed loudly when the final explosions illuminated the night. Then it all went silent, soon followed by the noise of people clapping and applauding down in the ruins of the old abbey across the river, where the main bonfire had been set and where all the fireworks had been lit.

“What now, lads and ladette?” Isaac asked, standing up and dusting off the wet moss and dead leaves that had stuck to his bottom. “Shall we go down to the abbey and grab some food?”

“We should open,” Cam said with a sigh. The Werewolf’s Arms was closed now but he knew they should open for the evening now that the fireworks were over. Thankfully Bleiton was small enough that they could indulge in such short breaks, but many people would be heading indoors now to the warmth.

“Such a spoilsport…”

Camden looked at Lydia and then at his brother, pausing for a second.

“Tell you what,” he said as he stood up. “You two can go and have a look for a while if you bring me back a burger.”

“Deal!”

Isaac helped Lydia up and then offered a hand to Scott, but the American was already up. Soon the four were walking down the path, out of the forest and into the allotments. After that, it did not take them long to reach the high street, where Cam and Lydia turned right towards the pub, while Scott and Isaac kept on walking.

As they crossed the bridge, they saw some people already heading back. A couple of them asked Isaac if the pub was open, and he just smiled and explained that his brother was on it.

“It won’t cease to amaze me how you know everyone here!” Scott said with his big smile.

“Yeah, well,” Isaac shrugged his shoulders. “It’s easy here in Bleiton.”

“Definitely not like Beacon Hills…” Scott said before he went on a long rant about his home town.

There were many things that Scott missed from Beacon Hills, and it was not only the weather. He missed his school friends, he missed lacrosse (which in Britain was a great unknown), he missed real pancakes, and he missed proper Mexican food. But there were many other things that he liked and had learnt to love. He liked the village life, he liked the countryside, he liked ham and leek pies (the concept of savoury pies blew his mind in week one), and he liked Isaac.

Scott liked that he was so close to his brother and how he made him smile with a witty comment or a well-timed eyeroll. He liked how he always tried to fix his hair every time he walked into the pub. He loved how he did not allow anyone in his pub to dare say anything bad about the American who worked in the kitchen. But Scott was afraid of what would happen if he told him. They lived in a small village, after all. Isaac had never been very vocal about his sexuality anyways (and neither had Scott), and Scott feared it might be because of where they lived. He also did not know if his mother would one day decide she was going to move back.

So even if he wanted something more, he was happy with the easy friendship the two of them had. In fact, in the short time he had been living there they had already lived a number of silly adventures. There was that week when they dared each other to collect as many traffic cones as they could from around the village. Once Scott took the bin so close to the edge of the road that it slipped off and fell into a ditch, dragging Scott with it – and then Scott pulled Isaac down with him when he tried to rescue him. There was also that time that Isaac swapped Scott’s beer for a pint of vinegar and watched as he tried to drink it. Scott did not know how Cam and Lydia dealt with the disaster duo without losing their cool.

Once in the abbey greens, Scott and Isaac bumped into more people the barman knew, including, to Scott’s great surprise, another American family. Scott knew of the Roses because they had been to the Werewolf’s Arms and because gossip in a small village travelled fast. Mr Rose (a former video tycoon) and his wife (an ex-soap-opera-star) had lost all their immense fortune and the only thing they were left with was a semi-abandoned cottage in the village which they were trying to run as a bed and breakfast.

Eventually, and after saying hello to almost every single person Isaac bumped into, they reached the burger van.

“Can I please have a cheeseburger for Cam,” Isaac began to order. “Also a battered sausage, a portion of chips with curry sauce, and… have you got pies?” he asked looking hopefully.

“Nah, mate. Sorry,” the woman in the van said.

“That’s okay, Isaac, I—”

“No, no, let me guess,” the blond said with a side smirk. “Okay, okay, so… Scott wants a chicken burger, all salad, burger sauce, aaaand… and onion rings?” he looked hopefully at Scott.

“Yeah!” Scott chuckled in surprise when he heard Isaac ask for his all-time favourite. “How did you know?”

“Well… I’m getting to know you well,” Isaac admitted, and Scott was not sure if Isaac was blushing or if it was just the cold.

Isaac paid, not letting Scott get his money out, and they hurried back to the pub, side by side, sharing wild stories, and even making plans for Christmas.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**


	2. Solstice night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After last orders in the Werewolf's Arms, an unexpected visitor makes his way into the pub.

It was late December, and the Werewolf’s Arms was busy. Isaac and Cam had spent a long time decorating the pub, and now there was a large tree in a corner of the dining room, and garlands and tinsel hanging from the exposed beams. There were also two stockings on the fireplace, one for each of the Lahey brothers.

“Last orders!” Isaac called with a smirk as he rang the bell. “Last orders in the bar!”

Standing up from stools and pushing back chairs, the customers rushed to the bar to order.

“Three bitters and a bag of crisps, please, landlord!”

“A mulled wine and two G&T’s, please.”

“Mulled wine and a cider slider, please, Isaac.”

“Two pints of cider, half a lager, and a large house white, please.”

Isaac dexterously and diligently pulled the pints and served the drinks for the last round. Fifteen minutes later, Isaac rang his bell again, letting everyone know that the bar was now closed. He encouraged his customers to drink up as he closed the till and began to put glasses away. People finished their drinks and slowly and merrily left, thanking Isaac on their way out. A few regulars lingered for a tad longer, including Bobby Finstock, chatting with Isaac about the special Thursday quiz and about his plans for the holidays. A few minutes later, Isaac waved goodbye to the last patron of the night and shut the front door.

Camden had opened that morning, so he was off for the night, but Isaac should not have been closing down on his own. He checked his watch. It was twenty-past eleven on the evening of the 22nd of December. It was the longest night of the year, and outside it was not only dark, but also freezing cold.

_Where is Scott?_

Isaac put all the stools and chairs on the tables and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He was about to start cleaning the floor when the radio DJ played one of his favourite Christmas tunes. A small smile formed on his face. Two seconds later, Isaac was brushing the floor as he half-hummed half-sang the song, keeping the rhythm awkwardly with his shoulders.

“ _I want to wish you a merry Christmas, I want to wish you a merry Christmas, I want to wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of my heaaaaart_ ,” Isaac yelled at his broom, eyes closed, as he did a spin. He stopped for a beat with the music, and then he continued brushing to the rhythm, bobbing his head in time. “ _Feliz navidad…_ ”

Two songs later, Isaac was unloading the dishwasher when he heard a knock on the door. He checked the time. It was 11:35. With a furrowed brow, Isaac turned the music down.

“We’re closed already!”

But the knocking continued.

“I said we’re _closed_!”

The knocking came in louder, and this time it did so with an accompanying voice. “Isaac, open!”

Isaac sighed and went to the front door to see who was there. He looked through the curtain and, supressing a growl, he opened.

“Oh, it’s you,” he deadpanned, standing in the door. “Finally.”

“Please, Isaac can you let me in? It’s _brass monkeys_ out there…” Scott showed off his knowledge of Britishisms.

With an eyeroll and a smile, Isaac stepped aside and let the cook in.

“About bloody time and all, don’t you think, Scott?”

“I know! I’m _so_ sorry!” he smiled as he tried to sink his head into the collar of his coat like a turtle. “But it’s been a nightmare…”

“You only had to go down to Lydia’s farm to get everything ready for the morning,” Isaac scowled. “You knew you had to help me close tonight. What could possibly have happened?”

Scott gave him a sheepish smile as he hung his coat and rubbed his hands.

“Well, it’s snowing.”

“Yeah, I can see…” he said as he ruffled the snowflakes off Scott’s head. Scott looked at him, and he got lost in his eyes for a second.

Cam had told him more than once that he should ask him out, that it was embarrassing to see him acting like that without actually doing anything about it.

“So, I tried to get the van up her road, and it all went south, because there had been a puddle, but it was all snowy sludge now, and—”

“Okay, okay,” Isaac smirked fondly, and everything was forgiven. “Just get the stuff in the kitchen. I’ll go open the back.”

Scott beamed at him in the way that only he could beam at Isaac, and walked out. Isaac stood there for a second thinking that maybe he should do something about Scott. Maybe he would decide to risk it and ask him out.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

Scott walked out into the cold, double-checking he had the van keys on him, because it would not have been the first time he left them in his coat pocket. He jumped in and drove to the back of the pub, where he waited for Isaac to open the door for him.

A few seconds later, Isaac opened the back door that led directly to the kitchen and waved him in.

“Do you need a hand?” he asked Scott as he ate a tangerine.

“I’ll be fine,” he smiled. “Have you done the barrels?”

“I was going to do them now.”

Scott nodded and Isaac disappeared into the cellar. The American walked back to the van and began to unload the contents: turkeys, sausage meat, bacon, eggs, chestnuts, parsnips, carrots – all the necessary bits for the Christmas menus. Scott scrunched his face when he picked the box of sprouts, but at least he only had to cook them, not eat them. In a couple of minutes everything was stored in the fridge and the pantries.

“That was the last one!” Scott called as he stretched his back, walking towards the front of the pub.

“Are you sure?” a voice that was not Isaac’s called from the front door.

“Who’s there?” Scott asked, puzzled, checking his watch. It was almost midnight, way too late for any social visit. He got his answer when he walked into the front room.

“Just me,” Lydia said with a smile as she put her coat and her umbrella in the stand, next to his.

“Did I forget anything?” Scott asked.

“Actually, you did,” Isaac said as he walked in carrying a crate of jars. “Cranberry sauce, anyone? I’ve also got honey for the parsnips and—”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Scott apologised, but Lydia dismissed his worry.

“Don’t worry. Oh, Isaac?”

“Yeah?” he asked, already from the kitchen.

“Put some milk on the fire while you’re there, will you?” Lydia asked, and they heard Isaac snort in laughter.

“Warm milk?” Scott asked with a confused chuckle.

“Scott,” Lydia said with a smirk as she pulled a bottle and a jar out of her bag, “it’s frigging cold and dark and nearly Christmas; have you ever heard of Irish cream and hot cocoa?”

Scott hadn’t, but it sounded amazing.

“I’ll be out now in a minute!” Isaac shouted from the kitchen.

“Okay!” Scott replied, his eyes fixed on the door to the kitchen, and a giddy smile on his face.

“Have you told him anything yet?” Lydia said in a hushed tone.

“No?” Scott avoided her look, shifting uncomfortably.

“You know he likes you, right? His brother keeps telling me all the time.”

“Really?” he asked, hopefully. “But he’s never said a thing? I don’t know if—”

“Guys?” Isaac’s stage-whispered voice interrupted their conversation. He sounded worried. “Can you come here for a second?”

Scott was happy to have that conversation interrupted, but Lydia gave him a very serious look, clearly indicating that they were not over with that chat.

“Quick, come here…”

“What’s wrong—”

“Shhhhh!”

“Isaac, I _swear_ —” Lydia began, but Isaac shushed her. Scott and Lydia looked at each other and decided to go and check on Isaac.

“Did you leave the back door open?” Isaac asked Scott without looking at him.

“No, why? Oh!”

Lydia and Scott walked through the door to the kitchen, where they saw Isaac, as tall as he was, frozen where he stood, staring at something the size of a small dog, covered in thick grey hair, except for the bright white face, which had two black lines running from a pointy nose to the eyes. Scott had lived in rural England for long enough to know it was a badger.

“Can either of you tell me what _that_ is doing in my kitchen?”

“I don’t know,” Scott said, his eyes fixed on the animal. “But don’t they carry TB or something?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he hissed nervously, “and we need to get it out before they shut us down.”

“Just be careful with the paws,” Lydia pointed out, strategically standing behind Scott. “They’re as big as shovels and full of claws.”

“I _know_ , Lydia; I’ve seen badgers before.”

As if on cue, the badger trotted closer towards Isaac, it stood on its hind legs, and sniffled his knees.

“Awww, Isaac, I think you’ve made a friend,” Scott whispered with an impossibly wide smile. For Scott this was fascinating, because his previous experience with animals in kitchens had been an insanely intelligent racoon that ran away with his bacon.

“Reach me the broom, will you?” Isaac said, still staring at the badger, which was now nuzzling against Isaac’s ankles.

“Isaac Lahey!” Lydia hushed threateningly. “Don’t you dare hurt it!”

“I’m just trying to shoo it away gently – with a broom.”

“I don’t know Isaac, I think he likes you,” Scott smirked.

“Oh _great_ , because I always wanted a badger in my pub,” Isaac said through gritted teeth, increasingly anxious, because he wanted to be angry, but he did not want to incur the wrath of the badger. Scott found it adorable. “Just give me the broom, and open the door.”

“How did it get in here in the first place?” Scott said as he slowly manoeuvred towards the back door.

“You tell me,” Isaac almost screeched, looking down at the badger as it scurried around his legs.

Scott was by the door when Lydia handed Isaac the broomstick, but at that moment the badger popped its head up and ran away from Isaac towards the front of the pub. Lydia screeched mostly out of surprise, throwing the broom to Isaac as the animal ran past her.

“He’s in the front!” Scott said, bemused.

“I bloody well know,” Isaac said as he followed the animal to the bar, broom in hand, quickly followed by Lydia and Scott. Then there was a loud bang.

“What’s that badger doing?” Scott asked after running into Lydia and Isaac, because Isaac had stopped dead in his tracks.

“It knocked down the coat hanger?”

“It’s growling at your coat?”

Indeed, the badger had toppled the coat hanger and was now half-buried into Scott’s parka. Isaac cautiously approached with the broom, but then the badger backed out of the coat, growling and with something in its mouth.

“Hey!” Scott now said, offended and pointing with his finger. “That’s my _phone!_ ”

It was at that moment that the badger decided that it had had enough, and darted towards the three humans, who jumped out of its way.

“Stop it!” Scott cried. “Isaac, why didn’t you stop it?”

“Shut up and run!” the blond said, dropping the broom and running towards the kitchen. “It’s gone!”

“What?”

“You left the door open.”

“There it goes!” Scott pointed from the threshold. “Come on!” he said as he ran outside into the snow.

“Someone stop that bloody badger!” Isaac shouted as he ran after Scott.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

Lydia stood in the pub while her two friends ran out into the snow without their coats, following a badger that had somehow stolen Scott’s phone. She stared and watched them run into the streets of Bleiton with incredulity – but it only took her a couple of seconds to remember that this was not the most outrageous thing those two idiots had done in the short time they had known each other.

So, with a sigh, she walked back into the pub, grabbed those two idiots’ coats, and walked into the kitchen to turn off the hob, because a burnt down pub would not be a great Christmas present for anyone. Once everything was safe and secure, she followed them in their badger chase.

There was a second when Lydia feared that they might have just run too far for her to find them, but then she heard Isaac shouting about ‘that bloody badger’ again, so she turned right towards the market square.

“Lydia!” a voice called her from a window. She stopped and looked around until she saw a woman peeking out of a window with a bejewelled brooch pinned to her dressing gown.

“Mrs Rose?” she asked.

“What are those two carefree companions of yours up to in this solstitial evening and is there a chance they can postpone their mustelid chase ‘til the morning?”

“Don’t worry, Mrs Rose,” Lydia reassured her, “it’s just that the badger walked into the pub and ran away with Scott’s phone. Everything will be under control shortly.”

“Well, if they must… but could you please tell them to keep their venatic proclamations quiet? Mr Rose and I are trying to get some well-earned oneiric rest.”

“I will, Mrs Rose,” she promised before running off up the street, still laden with her friends’ coats. 

“There it goes! _”_ Lydia heard Scott shouting, and she caught a glimpse of him and Isaac running down the lane towards the edge of the village.

“There she blows!” Isaac said immediately after, clearly enjoying this far more than he should, probably because it was not his phone in the maws of a badger. Lydia supressed a groan and turned left.

Then she _saw_ the badger. It still had Scott’s phone in its mouth, but it had stopped in the middle of the road, right in the centre of the cone of light of a street lamp, as if taunting them.

“It’s a side-quest badger!” Isaac gasped as he stopped abruptly. “Follow it!”

“I don’t care if it’s a side quest or a main quest – I want my phone back!”

“Wait, you two!” she called as she approached them, but then the badger took off, scurrying under a hedge into the fields.

“But the side-quest badger is getting away!” Scott moaned, though he still waited for Lydia so he could put on his coat.

“Why do you two always get me in these embarrassing situations?”

“It’s not embarrassing,” Isaac said as he zipped his wax jacket up. “It’s just that you’re not in the spirit of it yet.”

“Whatever. You’ll have to explain the spirit of this particular chase to Mrs Rose when she comes in the pub next,” she warned him, but Isaac and Scott were already jumping over the low gate into the field.

“Oh, that old cow…”

“Guys, hurry up?” Scott turned back to look and wave at them. “The badger!” and then he was off, running into the dark and snow-covered fields.

“You two owe me,” Lydia said as she trotted alongside Isaac behind Scott, thankful that she was still wearing her wellies. “Like, _big_ time.”

“You really love us, Lydia,” Isaac said, pulling his flat cap out of his pocket and putting it on. “Admit it.”

“You wish,” she lied, trying to hide her smile.

“There!” Scott cried out ahead. They could now follow the badger in the dark because Scott’s phone was glowing.

The badger kept trotting, leaving the field behind and into an area covered with trees, and the three friends followed it until they reached a small clearing, where they lost the badger. The clearing was in the centre of the grove. In the middle of it there was a small mound with many hollows and tunnels, which was probably the badger’s sett. Under the layer of snow, it was covered in honeysuckles and holly bushes, while the branches of the trees that circled it were nude of leaves but had thickets of mistletoe. Most impressive was the extremely ancient and bent with age tree that curved above the sett. For a second Lydia could have sworn that the tree was covered in thin veins of bright silver and green.

“Well, what now?” Isaac huffed as Scott walked around the sett.

“I think you should give up on it,” Lydia said.

“Why would a badger want my phone?” Scott scratched his head.

“A present for the missus?” Isaac joked, but Scott did not find it funny.

“I did not want your phone,” a voice said. The three friends stepped back and Scott and Lydia huddled behind Isaac simply because he was the tallest.

“Who are you?” the American asked.

“You may call me Bramley,” the voice said again. It was deep and full of dignity and authority.

Then the badger appeared at the top of the sett, and dropped Scott’s phone on the snow.

“Bramley the Badger?” Isaac asked.

“It suits my purposes to present myself in this form,” the voice echoed in their heads, but they could not see the badger’s mouth moving, which perhaps was for the best.

“And what are you exactly, if not a real badger?” Scott asked next.

“I would be a personification of the solstice.”

“A what now?”

“Okay, very funny,” Lydia said. “Camden Lahey, show yourself now.”

“You three have been chosen,” the voice continued. The badger began to glow, and the three friends stepped back. “You have been chosen to carry out a most important task that will save the world.”

“Camden, that was great with the badger and all, but please step out?” Isaac called out, his voice not sounding as certain as he had intended.

“Tonight is the longest night of the year,” the badger-voice continued. “Tonight, as every winter solstice, a sacrifice must be made to ensure that the sun will rise again.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Isaac pointed at the badger. “Nobody is sacrificing anything or anyone here.”

“Stop talking to the badger and get your brother to stop,” Lydia insisted through gritted teeth.

“Don’t these quest creatures, like, speak in rhyme?” Scott asked.

“You want a mystic badger speaking in limericks?” Isaac turned around. Scott shrugged his shoulders, but Lydia simply rolled her eyes and muttered something about idiots.

“Perhaps it is better if I show you?” Bramley said, unexpectedly arching an eyebrow. Then the grove they were in became engulfed in a spiral of snow and everything faded to white.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

_Isaac, Scott and Lydia were floating above a snow-covered landscape. There were hills and a sinuous river. In fact, it looked like the area around Bleiton, but there were no fields or buildings to be seen. The only recognisable landmark was the clearing on the top of the hill where they had been just a heartbeat ago._

_“When humans first looked up at the heavens,” the voice of Bramley rumbled in the sky, “they recognised the pattern of the Sun. They learnt that it shone higher and higher in the southern sky until it reached a point from where it could only shine lower.”_

_Bramley’s spirit was like a pulsating source of calming energy that reverberated in the sky they were flowing across._

_“In a time where the Northern Ice advanced grinding mountains to sand, it was imperative that the Sun never sink too low.”_

_In an instant, Isaac, Scott and Lydia were pushed through the air to a lower altitude, where they saw a woman clad in furs carrying a spear and a torch._

_“This belief in the certainty of winter doom was shared across all the humans who had seen the Ice and who had suffered in winter. And out of that belief, I was created.”_

_Bramley paused, and the wind blew harsher and colder, filling the three friends’ hearts with gloom and an irrational fear of darkness that grew right behind their heads. None dared look back, but they knew_ it _was there, lurking._

_“The humans sought one of their wisest priestesses to find a solution. Priestesses had always understood the importance of time and the cycles of nature, and this chosen priestess understood that the sun would continue sinking further and further down in the sky unless something was done.”_

_Lydia looked at Scott and Isaac, who were too busy following the mysterious woman in the snow. She wanted to speak and show how none of that made sense, but she felt compelled to continue listening._

_“The Sun needs guiding. The Sun needs to know that it cannot sink any further. The priestess knows where to light the beacons in order to bring it back on course.”_

_Only then did they notice that there were several large fires spread across the surrounding countryside. There were four, forming a curved pattern, and the priestess was running towards what looked like a fifth one._

_“But the priestess knows that she is not only fighting against time,” Bramley continued, more sombre this time. The irrational fear that the three friends had experienced intensified. “Because in the same way that humankind hoped for the solstice and the return of the sun, people also believed in Winter. And with that belief, he was created. People feared the death and cold that came with him.”_

_Isaac was the first to point at the impossibly-dark shadow with icy blue eyes that seemed to be running after the priestess. It was not certain that she was going to make it to the last beacon when the sun in the East began to turn purple._

_“You must light the beacons that will guide the sun back to its path,” Bramley’s voice was now firm. “You must stop the forces of winter from taking over. You have been chosen like your ancestors were chosen generations ago, because you know how important it is to believe.”_

_Bramley’s spirit brought them closer to the ground. There they saw that the priestess was not alone – there were two men running behind her, keeping their eyes over their shoulders, and eventually turning around to fight off the shadows. One of them shouted something to the priestess, and the woman kept on running with the torch towards the hilltop._

_“You must light the beacons before the sun rises over the horizon…”_

_In front of their eyes they saw the two men fighting off the shadows. Besides the priestess, a very distinctive badger appeared, trotting along with her. The shadows and the warriors screeched as the sky turned orange. Then the priestess reached the edge of the grove and threw her flaming torch on a pyre that was built against a single, young tree covered in silver spirals, and the pyre burst into flames as tall as a house._

_At that moment, the badger jumped into the flames and disintegrated into a warm wave of translucid orange that shook the snow off the branches._

_And the cold, yellow light of dawn turned one bit warmer and brighter._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used to work behind the bar at the rugby club. Sometimes I miss it...


	3. The cairn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac, Scott, and Lydia learn more about their quest and about the beacons

Isaac blinked and saw the badger scurrying away into its sett. He felt the chill of the night sinking into his body, and he shivered.

“Did you also have that freaky dream about the priestess and the dying sun?” he asked after a second. The nervous pause that followed his question was all the confirmation he needed.

“But it does not make sense,” Lydia insisted. “Badgers don’t speak, the sun will always shine for longer after the solstice, and winter always comes to an end!”

At that very moment, the night seemed to get darker. The thick snow clouds, fluffy and backlit by a distant moon, turned from ashen to charcoal. Something deep inside them stirred, an unnatural and instinctive fear, genetically passed down by generations. The shadows of the leafless trees shimmered with mischief for the briefest instant. Isaac stepped back until he bumped shoulders with Lydia.

“I don’t think that was my brother, Lyds.”

“Oh!” Scott exclaimed in surprise as his phone buzzed. “I got a notification… sunrise reminder, 8:10?”

“Did the side-quest badger set an alarm in your phone?” Isaac arched an eyebrow.

“This can’t be true,” Lydia insisted, but she was clearly doubting it herself.

Scott’s phone buzzed again.

“Oh, and another!”

“What does it say?”

“Err….” Scott decided that it was better to show them. “It says to check our pockets?”

Isaac was quick to pat his coat, and his jeans, until he noticed that there was _something_ scrunched in his back pocket. He pulled it out and it was a piece of paper with some very neat handwriting and a black paw print in a corner. Scott found another one inside his parka, and Lydia, despite her incredulity, fished one out of her jeans as well. The three strips of paper seemed to fit together, and after some wrangling around, they reconstructed the original note:

_The solstice fires burn high and low,_

**¤** _from ruined temples to barley mows_ **H** _;_

**ꬸ** _They shine through the water,_

_And flame up the stacks_ **ϙ**

_They’re lit on the daughter_ **ϡ**

_to bring the sun back_

_¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ_

“That bloody badger has _really_ sent us on a quest?” Isaac said, looking at Scott with a big grin, who was also way too excited. Lydia, however, was still very aware that they were standing in the cold, after midnight, on a hill outside the village, staring at a badger sett.

“I _knew_ these creatures spoke in rhyme,” Scott fist pumped.

“Now riddles? Could this get any tackier?”

And just like that, a burning torch materialised in Lydia’s hand. The flame was not the usual orange, but rather it was golden yellow, and warm like a summer afternoon. The wood of the torch itself was carved with complex spirals and geometric motifs that glowed emerald green. The handle was made of the softest, light brown leather.

“Lydia, we have the sacred duty to guide the sun back and halt Winter,” Scott accentuated the capital W.

“Winter only technically starts today! That’s what the solstice means!”

“That’s not what Bramley meant,” Isaac pointed out.

“Oh, so he’s not a bloody badger anymore?” Lydia frowned.

“He still is,” the blond underlined, “but he is also a mystic power of nature.”

“And where do we start?” Scott was more worried with the riddles. “Even if there were less than five beacons, it still—!”

“It’s _fewer_!” Lydia squinted at Scott, mostly because she did not like the idea of becoming the priestess of a badger cult. “And, also—”

But Lydia could not continue, because a very quick gust of cold wind circled around them, shaking the branches of the grove and covering them with snow. This was followed by an unnatural screech that brought the three friends in a huddle around Lydia’s fire.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“There!” Scott pointed at something which was not there when the rest looked.

“What?”

“I think I saw something…”

“Saw _what_?” Lydia insisted.

“It was—”

Another sudden gust of wind came, from a different direction this time, accompanied by the same screech, although this time they felt it _closer_ to them.

“I don’t like this,” Scott pointed out.

“There!!” Isaac was the one to shout this time.

“What _was_ it?” Lydia demanded, getting increasingly frustrated and scared.

“It was like… like a shadow. A very dark shadow just _standing_ there… and then it was gone?”

“Yeah…” Scott nodded slowly as he kept his eyes on the edge of the grove. “Like a nazgûl.”

“Oh my _word_! That badger totally brought us to the Weathertop!” Isaac gasped, agreeing immediately.

“Give me a break… Can you two boys be rational for a second and—”

But Lydia was interrupted by a dark shadow that floated from the edge of the trees towards her, screeching like a banshee. The shadow figure looked like an overgrown and two-dimensional ferret or a weasel, but with long arms that reached down to the floor. The creature put its claws forward trying to grab the lit torch, but it never reached it, because Isaac pulled Lydia away and dragged her and Scott by the wrists, running through the snow towards the village.

“What are you doing!?” Lydia said while, behind them, the shadow creature screeched.

“Getting us to safety and protecting the fire from that flipping nazgûl!!”

The three friends only stopped to breathe and look back when they reached the gate by the hedge. They could see their tracks in the snow and, far in the distance, they saw the hilltop where Bramley had told them about their mission to save the Sun. Something darker than night shifted across the trees, and the three climbed over and walked deeper into the village.

“Please let’s stop and think,” Lydia stomped her heels, making the two boys stop.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Scott was biting his lip and clicking his fingers, trying to think. “We have the riddle, and we have the magic fire, and we have—we have the pub!”

“To the pub!” Isaac cheered in agreement.

A window opened from a nearby house, only to reveal Mrs Rose in her bejewelled bed attire.

“While I do enjoy the occasional cup or two, and since you have clearly shifted your nocturnal interest towards pyrotechnics,” the ex-soap-star said in her eccentric patronising tone, pointing at the torch. “Could you please relocate your rural celebrations away from Mr Rose’s eaves?”

“But Mrs Rose,” Isaac was quick to reply, “the sun-eating nazgûls are on the loose and the badger told us how to stop Winter!”

“And I am very sure you will continue to have much fun playing your little games of draconids and oubliettes, even if you transpose your gaming to the public house.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs Rose,” Lydia shooed Isaac and Scott away. “We won’t bother you anymore.”

“I’ve heard that one before…” she concluded, shutting her window.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

After a bit of arguing with Isaac, who was very adamant on his ‘no open flames in my pub’ rule, Lydia placed the torch in the fireplace, where they hoped it would be safe. Now, Lydia and Scott were sat at a table in the Werewolf’s Arms, staring at the rhyming instructions while they waited for the kettle to boil. It was not long until Isaac walked back into the bar with a tray.

“Triple espresso with nothing for Lydia, disgusting instant coffee with red milk for Scott, and two-bag, three-sugar and blue milk tea for me.”

Scott smiled at Isaac, and Isaac returned it for perhaps a second too long, but neither minded. Lydia did, and she huffed but said nothing.

“I think I’m going to need something stronger and stiffer,” Lydia said after her first sip. “Especially after seeing those shadow creatures…”

“They didn’t seem too afraid of the fire,” Scott pointed with his chin at the fireplace. “But they didn’t come to the village.”

“Maybe it’s lightbulbs that they’re afraid of,” Isaac offered.

“What are they?” Scott asked, tapping nervously on the table.

“They’re obviously some sort of Winter spirit,” Lydia deduced. “They were the shadow creatures that tried to stop the priestess from lighting the beacon.”

“Those cavemen seemed pretty scared of them,” Isaac reminded them. “And they had spears.”

“I don’t think they care that much about us,” Lydia explained. “I think they just care about the flame.”

The three of them turned to look at the torch that burned in the fireplace. Its magical flame was powerful enough to heat all of the room, and even if it burned bright, it did not appear to be consuming the wood.

“So what are we going to do?” Scott said. “We don’t have spears.”

“I think we need to focus on lighting the fires.”

A silent pause followed. The three friends looked at each other as they processed it all. They had to save the sun and they had to light the beacons. They had to protect the torch and keep it from the claws of the shadows. There was a lot they did not understand, but the basics were clear, and the consequences dire.

“Does any of us remember where the five beacons were?” Scott asked first as he stirred his coffee with a spoon.

“No.”

“Have we got a clue about what these instructions refer to?” he nodded at the poem.

“No.”

“And what about those symbols?” he asked again. Lydia gave him a glare better than any verbal answer.

Another pause followed. They sipped their drinks slowly, trying to think. The clues, the symbols, the magical fire. It really was a lot to take in.

“What we need is a map,” Isaac sighed eventually, taking a sip from his tea while Lydia mindlessly curled her hair around her finger as she read the poem over and over again.

Then Scott’s face illuminated, and Isaac could almost see the lightbulb above his head. The American stood up and walked to the dining room without saying a word. Isaac looked at him walk away without really understanding what he had gone there for.

“Stop checking him out,” Lydia said with her eyes still on the poem.

“I wasn—”

“Yes, you were,” she said as she pulled her phone out.

“Got it!” Scott announced as he walked back with something framed that he had clearly pulled down from a wall.

“What are you doing with that?”

“It’s a map of Bleiton and surroundings!” Scott said, putting the map on the table.

It was, indeed, a map of Bleiton-on-the-Water, but it was an old Victorian map, detailed and hand drawn, indicating the various places of interest in the surroundings and even labelling the names of the owners of each plot of land. Had they had a historical society in Bleiton, it would have been displayed there.

“Get it out of its frame,” Lydia instructed as she put her phone (where she was checking the map too) on the table.

“ _No!_ That’s, like, a family heirloom,” Isaac complained.

“You didn’t know you had it until Scott brought it here.”

“It’s a matter of principles,” he grouched, but he did not stop them. Isaac was happy to follow Scott’s lead. He always found him inspiring in a way he could not explain.

“Well, let’s start with ‘ruined temples’ and ‘barley mows’,” Lydia said, ignoring her friend. “I’ve been thinking and there is the abandoned church behind Parrish’s field and there are also the ruins of the abbey.”

“What are the symbols, though?” Scott pointed at the odd spiked circle, the capital aitch, the stick with the squiggles, the circle with the dangly bit, and the reversed euro sign.

“I think they are just to indicate us the order in which to light the beacons,” Isaac suggested, looking at the bottom line.

“Can we focus on the temple? And the barley mow?” Lydia begged.

“Well, the ‘shines over the water’ is easy,” Scott said with confidence. “That’s the stream there,” he said pointing at a sinuous line on the map.

“But it isn’t over the water.” Lydia objected. She had considered that option briefly herself, but it did not fit with the instructions they had. “It’s _through_ the water. How are we meant to light a beacon in the river?”

“It’s a magical torch,” Scott continued. “I’m sure it can burn through the water.”

Lydia squinted at Scott, thinking carefully whether he was being very clever or just joking.

“Oh, I know!!” Isaac said standing up, and Scott and Lydia turned to look at him, not really sure if they believed him.

“Do you now?”

“Yes!” Isaac said, fully convinced now. “Quick, get your coats. We need to get ready,” he told Scott as he ran to the back of the pub.

“Where are you going to?” Scott asked, balancing back in his chair, trying to get a view of Isaac down the corridor.

“Getting my wellies.”

“Will you explain yourself before we run out into the cold of the night again?” Lydia asked.

“Through the water, that’s the key. They shine through the water,” Isaac said as he walked back with his rubber boots. “The Shilling Bridge!”

“That makes no sense, and if you’re right about the symbols indicating the order, the water is the third beacon. We need to light two others before that!”

“The Shilling Bridge,” Isaac said as he tucked his trousers into his tall socks. “It’s built where the river narrows, where the rocks are, and over the cascade.”

“So?” Lydia still did not understand.

“The cascade has hollowed the rock behind it. It’s literally a water screen at one point, and behind it there’s a cave. If you walk to the bridge from the bank towards the cascade then you can get there. If we light a fire there it will shine _through_ the water.”

“And it sort of looks like this stick with a squiggle,” Scott offered.

Lydia looked at Isaac, and then at Scott, who just nodded with a giddy smile. She then turned her attention to her taller friend, taking an instant to think about this possibility. “I’ll grant you that, Isaac. That could work. But a beacon is normally a tower with kindle and hay and other things that burn. We can’t start a fire behind a waterfall.”

“I trust Bramley,” Isaac insisted with confidence.

“If Bramley had wanted to make it easy for us, he would have given us a map,” Scott mentioned casually. “He gave us clues, so we would think hard about this. He really is a side-quest badger.”

Scott looked at Isaac for approval, and the landlord nodded with a big smile.

“Okay, okay, _fine_ ,” Lydia gave up. If a mystic solstice badger had entrusted the fate of humankind to those two dorks, who was she to oppose the will of the Universe? “Let’s first focus on the temple and the mowed barley, shall we?”

Lydia and Isaac put their heads together, trying to decode what the verses meant by barley mow – which was most definitely not one of the other pubs of Bleiton. Meanwhile, Scott studied the old map on the table, passing his fingers carefully through various elements, finding parts of the village that were still there, areas that were then fields but were now built up, and old buildings that were there no more. There were also some odd symbols that he soon guessed signified land use, like quarries, or graveyards, or meadows. There was one, however, whose meaning he could not guess.

“I think I’ve found something?” he said with his eyes still glued to the map. “There’s the first symbol, the circle with the spikes. It’s on top of the hill!”

“Yeah,” Isaac said, not very convinced. “That symbol marks the summit. It’s a map marker for a topographic node.”

“The node – the cairn!” Lydia said, suddenly very excited, and taking the map so it was facing her. “The Carngoch hill is a topographic landmark and it has a cairn marking it. But this one is not any cairn – it’s an _ancient_ cairn!” she said, circling it with a pencil.

“Hey!” Isaac protested. “That’s an antique!” Lydia ignored him.

“A cairn is a pile of stones,” she continued. “But ours is a very ancient one. It’s a listed monument. It’s a Bronze Age solar marker!”

“It’s what?”

Lydia was quick to lean the map with one corner up her mug, while turning the light of her phone on.

“ _Y garn goch_ is the old, medieval Welsh name, which means ‘the red cairn’,” she explained, and Isaac rolled his eyes because after seven years of doing twenty hours of Welsh a week in school, he could have guessed, had he known what a cairn was. “It’s called red because it’s always the first element of the landscape that is lit by the rising sun!” she put her phone in such a way that it illuminated the part of the map that was leaning against her mug. “That’s why it was marked with a sacred heap of stones – it is a _ruined temple_!!”

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

“Hurry up” Isaac shouted from the front door. It had taken them a while, but they had eventually cracked the code – at least for the first four locations. They were hoping that they could guess what the poem had meant by the ‘daughter’ and the reversed euro sign as they lit the other beacons.

“Yeah! Coming!” Scott shouted. Soon, he and Lydia appeared from the back of the pub with their coats and carrying the torch. “Other than these kitchen knives I don’t know what else we could use to keep the shadow creatures at bay…”

Lydia was about to object, but she was interrupted by something pawing at the front door. The three friends looked at each other for an instant before Isaac threw the door open. Right at the edge of the snow illuminated by the light that escaped from the pub they could see the distinctive shape of a badger’s backside disappearing into the night.

“Bramley, wait—”

Isaac was about to chase after the badger, but he tripped over something.

“Careful, Isaac!”

“What the hell?”

“Look,” Lydia pointed at the pub’s threshold.

“Do you think the badger just dropped those for us?” Scott asked.

“I think they are for the shadow creatures,” Lydia guessed.

Isaac knelt down and had a careful look. Bramley, the personification of the Solstice who had entrusted them with the sacred duty of guiding the sun back to stop an eternal winter, had dropped at his doorstep two cricket bats.

“I think you’re right,” Isaac agreed as he picked them up and handed one to Scott. Inspecting it more closely, Isaac could see that the wood was covered in thin, spiralling veins of silver that glowed in the same mystic green as the runes and carvings that decorated the torch. The handle felt strangely warm – much like the summer fire that Lydia carried on her torch.

“Of all things, he has given us this?”

“Do you know how to use a spear?” Lydia arched an eyebrow, and Scott had no reply to that.

“We’re fending off evil winter spirits with these?” the American asked, now sounding more excited than bemused.

“Why not?” the blond offered with a side smile.

“Stop flirting, you two doughnuts,” Lydia warned them, and both blushed violently and moved on. “Let’s get going – the hilltop is not that close, and my ears are freezing,” she said as she stepped out of the pub, closing the door firmly behind her.

“Oh,” Isaac suddenly realised. “There’s a problem.”

“What now?” Lydia asked, not in the mood for any more antics.

“How are we putting a flaming torch into your car? And how are we getting it up the hill?”

Lydia turned around slowly, not really liking the idea of walking out into the snow on foot. There were some comments about being Olympic flame carriers, but those were met with a glare that could kill. Of course, when Isaac said that ‘it now makes sense the side-quest badger gave us eight hours to complete our task’ he was met with the same response.

The walk from the pub to the cairn was pretty straight forward, because they had all walked it dozens of times. They walked down the deserted and snow-covered village streets, passing by the thatched cottages and the occasional streetlight. When they got to the edge of the allotments, the three stopped for a second: ahead of them stretched the dark fields, barely lit with the night glow of the snow, and full of dark corners.

“Come on, we can do this,” Scott said as he walked forward, with a confidence that made Isaac feel stuff in his chest. “I’ll lead the way.”

With the crunch of the snow under their boots, the three friends walked down the lane, keeping an eye on the hilltop and another over their shoulders.

“Do you think that we were chosen for a specific reason?” Isaac asked from the rear, poking at the snow with his bat. “By Bramley, I mean.”

“One thing I’ll tell you now,” Lydia said, her breath condensing in puffy clouds in the air. “When I next see that… _badger_ , we’re going to have some serious words.”

“I think it’s quite exciting,” Scott admitted.

“I had never had you for someone happy to give up a good night’s sleep to venture out in the woods with a feeble excuse, or one to save the world,” Isaac commented.

“Yeah, well. It’s all about the company,” Scott said, and Isaac could hear the smile in his voice. “And I could not live in a constant winter; I like the summer too much.”

A few minutes later they reached a field gate. Scott was about to open it when Lydia put a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait.”

The American froze, and slowly pulled back from the gate, lifting his bat to a swinging position.

“What is it, Lydia?” Isaac asked, turning around, and keeping an eye on their rear.

“I don’t know… I feel _something_.”

“That’s not ominous at all…”

“I know, but I am sensing something,” she continued, struggling to explain exactly what was going on. She somehow knew something was about to happen. “It’s like a murmur, a low murmur…”

“Watch out!” Scott called, not letting Lydia finish.

Within the space of two seconds, Lydia saw how one of those shadow creatures snaked out from a corner of the hedge, standing tall above her with a menacing grin. She instinctively put the torch away and stepped back, stumbling into Isaac. Meanwhile, Scott swinged the bat, which hissed like a hot pan in cold water as it swished through the shadow.

“Keep going!” Scott said as the shadow recoiled away from the path for a second. “Reach the top and light the beacon!”

“No, Scott!” Isaac yelled, keeping his bat levelled and pointing at the dark corner. “You can’t fight that thing _alone_!”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Scott promised with a wink. “I won’t let you go too far without me. And what if there’s another one up there?”

“I can take care of myself, thank you very much,” Lydia growled. “I’ve been running a farm for a few years now, mister, so don’t you go all—”

She could not finish her threat, because the shadow creature charged at them, aiming at Lydia directly. Isaac batted wildly and missed, and Lydia had to duck down, pulling down Isaac into the snow. Scott came running towards them, pushing them up and shouting at them to climb up the hill.

“I _hate_ the snow,” Lydia muttered as she pushed herself up and ran up the path, Isaac close behind her.

The Winter shadows pestered Scott for a while, but they soon gave up when they saw the torch being taken up the hill. Scott shouted a warning when the shadow outran him, and then it was Isaac the one who batted at the shadows, trying to hold them back while Lydia carried the torch. Somehow the blond had kept the shadows at bay, even if his batting was more erratic and intimidating than it was accurate. When Scott reached his friend, the shadow creatures vanished in the night.

“Guys, come up here!” Lydia called from the top. Isaac and Scott looked at each other and they trotted up the hill, through the snow; following Lydia’s footprints. By the time they reached the cairn, Lydia was in a furious panic. “I don’t understand, it should be here!”

“What?”

“The beacon! Anything we could light. There’s only snow and the pile of rocks.”

As Lydia wondered if they had got something wrong, and as Isaac tried to reason with her, and think about what they could do, Scott kept his eyes open around the hilltop, with his bat resting on his shoulder, ready to keep any shadow creatures at bay.

“I think I can make the outline of the sports fields from here,” he said to nobody in particular. He tried to position himself in such a way that he could look at them from the cairn, trying to get a direct line, and then he _heard_ it.

“Did you also hear that?” Isaac asked, interrupting his conversation with Lydia. “It was like—”

“Like a trumpet,” Scott agreed. “Or a horn. It came from around… HERE!”

Lydia and Isaac, hearing Scott’s surprise, walked to where their friend was. At the bottom of the cairn, and glowing with the same emerald green light that radiated off the torch, there was a spiked circle symbol on one of the stones.

“I swear that was not here before,” Lydia said. “I looked carefully and there was nothing!”

Isaac knelt down carefully and brushed his finger on the symbol, which glowed brighter.

“I think you should touch it with the torch,” Isaac guessed as he stood up. He did not know _why_ , but he was sure about it.

Lydia looked at him and nodded. With one quick movement, she brought the fire down to the symbol, which glowed brighter and brighter until the entire cairn burst into flames, impossible as it seemed. The three friends stepped back, admiring the burning stone and the tall pillar of warm, summery light they had created, and everything faded to white.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

_Scott, Lydia, and Isaac were no longer on top of the hill where the cairn had been lit. Around them everything seemed fuzzy, as if they were in the midst of a very thick fog. All they could hear were loud explosions and sirens going off constantly. Above them, the sky thundered with the low, dull roar of propellers. Hundreds of propellers._

_In front of them, and moving in slow motion, there were three people, roughly their age, but clearly in old clothes. One of them was a young man with military-short, light brown hair, a chiselled profile and fierce blue eyes wearing the blue uniform and white tin hat of air raid wardens. He was standing in front of his two companions, batting with the butt of his rifle (which was covered in silver spiral motifs that glowed green) at a winter shadow creature. The other boy was in torn civilian clothes, including a dirty shirt, high-waist wool trousers held with braces and a flat cap. His eyes were brown and his face was sprinkled with moles. He was shoving with his shoulder against a stuck door, trying to bring it down. The young woman was in a white nurse’s uniform and a long blue coat. Her hair was long and dark, and her eyes were brown and full of resolution. She was holding a torch, much like Lydia’s._

_Lydia stepped around them only to see that behind the door there was a bright-green symbol carved on the remains of a church tower. Beyond, the sky burned orange and red, reflecting the explosions and fires from the city below. And, through the clouds and the smoke, she could see wave after wave of German bombers._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone saw Stiles, Jackson and Allison in that flashback?


	4. The Shilling Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac, Lydia, and Scott continue their quest, but something is waiting for them at the Shilling Bridge

When they blinked, the three friends were again on top of the hill, standing in front of a magically burning pile of Bronze Age rocks. They had lit the first beacon, and it was throwing a column of light and warmth up into the night sky. Isaac was suddenly very sure that this pillar of summer light could guide the Sun when it first peeked over the horizon. It was not just the darkness; it was also the chill of the winter wind that seemed to be dissipating next to the beacon.

But before they could congratulate each other, they heard an angry hiss behind them. Isaac and Scott turned around, bats at the ready, and they saw the winter shadows glaring and cursing at them with their speechless hissing from the edge of the circle of light. The two shadows clearly tried to enter into the illuminated area, but they could not even get their claws in it. With a frustrated screech, they disappeared into the darkness, and the disaster duo put their bats down.

“Did we all see the lighting of a beacon during the Blitz?” Isaac asked, not sure if he had dreamt that or not.

“Those people were like us, right?” Scott added.

“We all saw that,” Lydia confirmed.

“Well…” Scott said slowly as he walked to the edge of the circle. “If anything, that confirms that we got this one right.”

“Definitely on for a good start?” Isaac offered with a big smile, winking at Scott first and then offering Lydia his fist to bump.

“That’s one of five,” she replied without bumping Isaac’s fist. “We still need to get to the other beacons and pray that we’re right in our guesses.”

“And we still don’t know what the fifth clue means.”

“You were always a little ray of sunshine, weren’t you, Isaac?” she smirked, rising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Scott chuckled. “Imagine if we had gone to the abandoned church instead!”

“It made perfect sense…” Isaac mumbled, trying to justify his choice of ruined temple.

“Come on, you two,” Lydia concluded, tightening her scarf. “We better get going. It’s almost two.”

“Are we sure the next one is in the sports fields?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Scott and Isaac walked out into the darkness first, keeping an eye for winter creatures. After a couple of minutes of checking the darkest corners of the hilltop, they were happy to let Lydia walk back on the path. This time Isaac was the one leading down towards the village while Scott kept an eye on their rear.

They had guessed that the next beacon was somewhere in the sports fields. As Lydia had pointed out on Isaac’s Victorian map, the sports fields were on what had once been known as the brewers’ meadow, a large, open field that the local brewers had used for barley. The field was on a high, flat terrace towards the north-east of the Carngoch, and high above the river. Lydia had deduced that the sun’s path would start at the Bronze Age marker and, as it continued rising, it would illuminate the sports fields next. Isaac, of course, had to point out that he had guessed the location of the second beacon before Lydia explained it, because he claimed the capital aitch represented the goalposts of the rugby field.

Isaac led them down the hill to the edge of the allotments, and from there he took a left on a dirt road that led down to the edge of the village. Leaving the cottages and the houses to their right, they eventually reached the far end of the high street where it turned into the road to Stratford. A snowplough had recently cleared it, but the wind was bringing more snow now. From there it was only a fifteen-minute walk to the sports fields, during which Isaac poked almost every single bush, branch and hedge with his bat.

“They are winter shadows, Isaac. Not triffids,” Scott joked from the back.

“Well, last time they creeped out of a tree!”

“Stop bickering,” Lydia warned and then she pointed with her torch up ahead, “we’re almost there.”

They were, indeed, at the edge of the sports fields. There was a club house and some stands on the far side. There were two low buildings for the changing rooms, and there were advertising banners of local businesses. The characteristic green lawn was now covered in over an inch of snow, which reflected all the available light, giving the fields an eerie night glow. At the far end, they could roughly identify the goal posts of the rugby pitch.

“It’s very calm. Almost too calm…” Isaac said with a smirk.

“There’s a beauty in it,” Scott offered. “A completely undisturbed carpet of snow.”

“Let’s get to the goals,” Lydia insisted. “Isaac saying ‘too calm’ probably jinxed us already.”

So they left the path and walked out into the virgin snow. Their boots sank and the snow lowly crunched and crushed. They were half-way through the cricket pitch when they felt the air around them getting impossibly colder. There was no wind, and the flame of the torch flickered.

“Be prepared,” Isaac said, tightening the grip on his bat and speeding up.

Soon, the already familiar screech of the winter shadows could be heard, but they were nowhere to be seen.

“Keep going,” Scott insisted, gently pushing Isaac and Lydia when they stopped. “We’re almost there.”

The snow-carrying wind began to blow harder, so much that the torch wavered in Lydia’s hand, and the flame flickered angrily. Lydia was about to say something, but the wind redoubled its strength, pushing the snow hard and horizontally at them, making it difficult for them to walk.

“I never knew you had blizzards here in England?” Scott yelled, covering his eyes with his arm.

“We don’t,” Lydia shouted above the gale, turning around to walk backwards.

She then had to bring the torch as close as she could to her chest, using her body to protect the flame from the wind. Isaac somehow noticed, and with one hand he grabbed the back of Lydia’s hood and guided her through the storm.

Isaac struggled to keep his eyes open, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate out there in the open – especially since the goal posts had completely vanished in the falling snow. It was there that Isaac tripped on something, falling flat on the snow and puling Lydia with him. As she fell, the torch flew off her hand, landing in the snow, which boiled and squeaked as it melted in the now-dying fire.

“Scott!” Lydia screamed, trying to reach the torch. Thankfully the American was close behind and picked the torch up before it dwindled too much.

“I can’t see the posts!” he shouted as he protected the flame with his body.

“They must be here,” Isaac shouted as he helped Lydia up. “We just tripped on the training tyres – we can’t be that far!”

Blinded by the snow and engulfed in darkness, Scott, Lydia and Isaac moved around in small circles, trying to find the goal posts as the blizzard carried the screech of the winter shadows.

“I think it’s dying! Boys, we need to hurry up,” Lydia said as she stopped to block the wind again.

“I’ve found them!” Isaac screamed with joy when he saw the green glow curving and climbing around the metal pole. “Follow my voice – they’re here!”

“Isaac we can’t see you – keep talking to us!” Scott said. The only thing he could see was Lydia’s flame in the violent snow.

“Come here! Lydia, keep walking,” Isaac instructed. “You’re nearly here. Yes, come on, can you see me yet?”

Then the winter shadows appeared again, screeching like banshees.

“Watch out!” Scott cried, and Isaac had enough time to react.

The blond turned around, bat at the ready, swinging it straight into one of the shadow creatures, which recoiled immediately. The wind seemed to pause for a second, but the shadow creature attacked Isaac once again – and he was forced to step back.

“Hurry!” he yelled as he tried to bat again.

From the corner of his eye Isaac saw Scott with one arm around Lydia’s shoulders, both of them lowering their body and advancing with speed towards the post, until they reached the base of the goal and placed the torch against the glowing spirals.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

_Isaac, Lydia, and Scott were suddenly under the pouring rain, even if they were not getting wet. In front of them, three people were trying to run up a cobbled street that was covered in torrents of muddy rain water. At either side of them there were whitewashed buildings with porticoes. Time advanced in extra slow motion, if the flashing of lighting and the hovering raindrops were any indication._

_Nearest to them was a large black man with wide shoulders wearing a padded jerkin and a flat velvet cap. He was wielding a halberd with magic spiralling motifs on its shaft, and was directing the blade at a winter shadow. Lying at his feet was a slightly older, white man with dark hair and a beard, and a silver crested helmet with a pointy brim. This soldier’s hand was stretched towards a crossbow covered in green-silver runes, which were almost washed away by the torrential rain. Up ahead, and leaving them behind, was a blonde young woman in a green skirt and a brownish-red overcoat. She was running up the hill carrying a flameless torch close to her, protecting the wood from the water._

_At the top end of the street, framed by palm trees and backlit by lightning in the night storm clouds, was a pink stone church with arched gates, domed towers and baroque carvings. From where they were standing it was difficult to see, but the large bronze bell at the top of the tower was_ definitely _ablaze in summer fire._

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

When they opened their eyes, the three friends were lying in the snow. The storm had instantly stopped, and they were again surrounded by the eerie silence of the snow-covered sports fields. The goal post was burning much like the Bronze Age cairn was: in a way that a solid tube of metal should not be burning and creating a pillar of warmth and light that projected into the night sky.

“That was close,” Isaac joked.

“It was not that bad,” Scott replied. “And where were those three other people? And when was that?”

“It felt like much longer ago. Some Caribbean colony perhaps… But that was some good team effort, guys,” Lydia, for once, gave them a smile rather than a frown. “We’re definitely getting better at this.”

“Looks like someone is finally getting into the spirit of the adventure?”

“I would not go that far, Lahey,” she smirked as she picked up the torch, which burst into radiant flames once it was out of the snow.

“What’s the best way to the river from here?” Scott asked, already thinking about the third beacon.

Isaac turned south to look at the dimly-lit outline of the village and the characteristic gurgling of the water. From where they stood, they could just about see the snow-covered stone bridge.

“We go down the bakery and then we get to the river path. Easy peasy, squeeze the lemon,” he concluded with a wink as he patted Scott’s shoulder, who looked back at him with a puzzled expression. Isaac simply snorted a laugh and shook his head. “Come on, I’ll lead the way.”

Isaac walked purposefully across the snow field towards the nearest buildings while Scott and Lydia took a second to admire the bright pillar of light. They looked back towards the hills, where they saw the first beacon, which from there seemed like a bright needle of light projecting upwards from the prehistoric monument. Isaac called them again and Scott offered his arm to Lydia, who gave him a polite nod before taking it and walking in the footsteps of their friend. Of course, without an evil wind blowing them away and with the yellow-orange glow of the village street lights, Scott, Lydia, and Isaac felt safer and more protected from the winter shadows.

They made it to the bakery, and from there to the river lane, which was a beaten earth path that ran along the bank. The naked branches of the trees that flanked the path had kept the worst of the snow off the trail, and it also helped that salt and grit had been sprinkled all over the place, so in no time they reached the old stone bridge.

The Shilling Bridge, like all old stone bridges, had a long list of legends associated to it: it was a Roman bridge, it was a medieval bridge, it had been built by the devil himself. Lydia, who was part of the heritage preservation committee, knew better, but under the current circumstances, she was ready to give Satan credit for this particular construction.

“Where’s this water cavern you were talking about?” Scott asked when they reached the edge of the bridge, spying around in case there were any suspicious looking shadows.

“Just there, under the second arch,” Isaac pointed. “What I’m going to do is wade across this first small branch of the river and then I’ll wait at those rocks. You walk up to that part of the bridge and you pass me the torch there, and then I’ll just walk down to the base of the rocks and make my way behind the curtain of water.”

“How did you find out about this cave?” Lydia asked.

“It’s a story that involves me, Cam, a newt, and a log that I thought was an otter,” Isaac commented briefly. “Details can wait – let’s get this beacon lit.”

Isaac walked down to the snow-covered pebbles that were at the base of the stonework while Scott and Lydia went around to go up the bridge. Using his bat to test the depth and to help him with his balance, Isaac carefully made his way through the first part of the river and reached the rocky outcrop without any problems. Scott visibly sighed in relief.

“I can see the beacon at the sports fields from here,” Lydia said in a louder voice because of the roar of the cascade.

“Probably means we’re doing well!” Isaac responded. “Hand me over the torch so I can get this done.”

“Just be careful,” Scott insisted with a worried face. “I don’t want you to get hurt!”

Isaac looked up to see his crush smiling at him with his eyes full of concern, making all his insides go mushy and warm in a way that only Scott managed to.

“Don’t worry,” he tried to smile, and thanked that it was dark, because he was sure he was blushing.

Lydia gave Scott the torch and the American lent over the stone parapet and dropped the flaming stake into Isaac’s arms and took his bat in exchange.

“I’ll be out now in a minute!” Isaac beamed, looking up one last time before slowly descending the cold and slippery rocks.

Scott and Lydia watched from the bridge, holding their breath every time Isaac tried to descend, little by little. The blond landlord poked with his rubber boots every stone and every corner, trying to find the best way down until he stepped into the black waters with a splash.

“I can see the cave,” he shouted above the noise of the falling water. “I’m going in!”

Then Isaac disappeared beyond their line of sight. Scott found Lydia’s hand and squeezed it. For what seemed to be an eternity, Isaac disappeared behind the water and then, all of a sudden, there was a burst of summer light coming from the cave, diffracting into a thousand rainbows that shone on the snow, and illuminating the surface of the river.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

_They were once again in a snow-covered landscape, but this was no bombed city or tropical island. A large castle with many tiled eaves and strong stone bulwarks stood proudly at the bend of the river. Again, the scene frozen in time in front of them included three people, but this time there were two winter shadow creatures standing in between them and an ornate bronze gong hanging from a red, wooden frame._

_Standing up front was a tall, very attractive young man, with tan skin, brown eyes, and short dark brown hair, fully equipped with a runed spear and lacquered samurai armour, although his helmet lied on the ground. Next to him was another warrior, with lighter skin and lighter eyes, and not as tall as the other one, and wearing only padded armour and a point straw hat. He was in the process of stabbing one of the winter creatures, but it had already lunged a shadowy claw at his chest. Behind them stood a young woman with straight black hair in a ragged silk dress. In one of her hands, they could see the torch of summer; in the other, a katana._

_Scott and Lydia tried to reach out, somehow hoping they could help their past counterparts, but every movement flowed as slowly as treacle. Isaac however, seemed more focused on the shadow creature that was attacking one of the warriors. It was then that he saw the shadow creature’s icy-blue eye opening and looking directly at him._

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

Isaac blinked and saw that he was still in the cave under the water fall. It was not that big, so he had to almost crouch to get in there, but there had been an iridescent rune glowing on what had been a rather unimpressive patch of very wet moss which burnt like hellfire regardless. A bit unsettled by the vision of the winter shadow staring at him in the eye, Isaac walked out of the cave, hoping that the fresh air would make him feel better.

What he had never expected was a winter shadow waiting for him. He did not have time to react – he simply caught a slither of darkness moving in the corner of his eye and the next instant he was mid-air. He had been pushed, and the next thing he noticed was himself falling into the icy waters of the river while the torch flew off his hand, landing in a rockpool by the banks, its flame dying in the snowy water.

The cold shock was such that he did not even feel the pain when he hit one of the rounded boulders.

“ISAAC!” he heard when he pulled his head over the water. The river was not very deep, once Isaac managed to stand up the water was only chest-high, but it was very cold. Very, _very_ cold.

Two voices now kept calling his name, but he could not distinguish them; they had all turned into background noise muffled by the pulse in his ears. He just knew that he needed to walk out of the water, but he was shivering, and his boots and his winter clothes were heavy with water. His teeth began to chatter out of control. He needed to get out immediately. God, he had never been so alert and so awake in his life!

“Isaac!” now he heard a voice which was clearly Scott’s, and soon he felt a hand grabbing him by the wrist, soon followed by two more grabbing his collar and pulling him out onto the snow-covered bank. “Isaac! Stay with me. Take off your coat.”

“B- b- but I’m _freezing_!”

“You’ll freeze faster if you stay wet!” Lydia instructed.

“I lost the t- t- torch,” he admitted once he realised why he had been around the river in the first place.

“We got it back,” Scott, who was taking his own coat off, explained. “But that can wait. We need to get you out of those clothes and into the warm.”

Still shaking, Isaac took off his coat, his jumper and his shirt, putting on Scott’s parka which was dry, warm, and smelled of his friend.

“B- b- but the torch?” Isaac asked when Lydia pulled him up to the path.

“That can wait,” she said, getting her phone out. “Now we get you home.”

Bleiton was a small village, but the walk back to Isaac’s and Cam’s place seemed to take ages. Once at the door, Scott shoved his hand into Isaac’s pocket trying to fish out his keys while Lydia banged on the door. Cam was already waiting for them with hot water bottles, towels, and a heater.

“Isaac!” his brother shouted and pulled him into the house, only to give him a bear hug, hoping that with that he could get the chill out of his brother’s body. “Here, quick, take them boots and trousers off,” he instructed once Isaac was in the living room. “And you two—care to explain what shenanigans you were on that landed him in the river!”

Camden was fuming in his pyjamas, and was looking very intently at Scott, as if somehow all of this was suddenly his fault. Thankfully, Lydia intervened.

“Camden, sit down.”

“If I’m sitting down it better be for a damned good explanation.”

“There is one,” she added, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. “It has to do with these bats and this torch.”

Camden arched an eyebrow at this. He looked at Isaac, who was hugging the hot water bottle and shivering under the towels and blankets. His brother, whose lips were only just regaining their normal colour, nodded emphatically.

“This is going to be hard to believe, Cam, but it is all true.”

Scott and Lydia (although mostly Lydia, as every time Scott tried to say anything Camden glared daggers at him) explained what had happened in the last few hours: the badger, the explanation at the glade, the magic torch, the poem, the shadow creatures, and the beacons. Camden had a hard time believing any of this, but only when Scott showed him the runes and the carvings on the bat and the unnatural yet comforting warmth that emanated from the handle, did he give their story credit.

“And now we still have two beacons to light,” Scott said sitting next to Isaac and handing him a steaming cup of milky tea, “but we are not sure about where the fifth one is.”

“Where’s the next one?” Camden asked, inspecting the bat, still baffled by the intricate inlays.

“We think it’s the abbey,” Lydia clarified. “But the torch is dead.”

“Perhaps we could reignite it on one of the other beacons,” Scott added, inspecting the torch with a frown. “No normal fire will do – we need the summer fire. And when we had that flashback to pirate times their torch was off.”

“Or we could ask Bramley,” Isaac offered.

“That badger has been less than helpful so far,” Lydia spat, having decided that she was going to hold a grudge against the solstice divinity. “But Scott’s right: we probably need to carry the same flame from a previous beacon.”

“Well, it’s all I’ve got,” Scott huffed. He was about to stand up but Isaac extended a hand from under the blankets and softly pulled him back down. The American gave him a soft smile and sat again.

“Isaac is not going anywhere tonight,” Cam decided. “He’ll catch his death if he goes out in the cold again.”

“I know how this is going to sound, Cam,” Isaac told his brother in his calmest voice, the one he used when his brother was being unnecessarily obtuse, which tended to be when he had decided on something and was not willing to change his view. “But I’m one of the chosen ones. That badger gave me the sacred bat to fend off the Winter Shadows.”

“You understand how this is not _D &D_, right?”

“Well,” Isaac insisted, changing his voice to his ‘my brother is being thick’ tone. “It is… _something_! Or do you really think we are the kind of people who would end up in the river in December.”

“You don’t want me to answer that question.”

“ _Cam!_ ”

“Okay, okay. There is some truth to your story,” the eldest Lahey admitted. Scott noticed how both brothers furrowed their brow and scratched their neck in the same way when they were deep in thought. “But if those night creatures are still there, you’re not going out without me. And definitely not until you’ve put on some clothes.”

Isaac rolled his eyes, even if he was still only in his underwear under the many towels and blankets.

“It’s only four,” Scott said, moving away so Isaac could go to his room and get changed. “We’re not in a hurry.

Lydia fulminated him with a look. “Famous last words…”

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

Scott and Lydia went out into the night followed by the Lahey brothers. Camden was mumbling something about pneumonia, but Isaac insisted that as he was wearing a thermal undershirt, a woolly jumper, two pairs of socks and a fleece plus a hat and a scarf.

“I’m going to break into a sweat any minute, and then you’ll be sorry about my heat stroke,” Isaac said with the bat on his shoulder, making Scott and Lydia snort a laugh.

The four continued to walk through the village with their eyes peeled in case a winter shadow attacked them again but yet again they managed to get to the bridge without any supernatural encounters.

“How sure are you about your waterproofs?” Lydia asked Camden, who was the one with water gear and who had volunteered to go down into the cave to re-light the torch.

“Fairly confident,” he answered with a grin, putting an arm around her shoulders. He was not as tall as his little brother, but was still taller than Lydia. “And I’ve gone down those rocks more often so—”

“Wait, look!” Scott stopped still and pointed at the river.

“What?”

“Can’t you see it?” he asked.

Isaac stepped forward and there was nothing out of the ordinary: there were no shifty shadows in the corners, there were no impossibly black figures, and the bridge was the old stone structure they had seen many times before. “The Christmas lights are off?” he offered, noticing that it was dimmer than usual.

“It’s not those lights. It’s the beacon under the bridge!” Scott paced up until he was running towards the bridge. His three friends were quick to follow, only to see that the river was as dark as they had found it, which was darker than they had left it. “The beacon is off!”

Lydia was trying to think what could possibly be happening, but then her eyes followed the course of the river until they reached the sports fields and suppressed a gasp.

The second beacon was dimming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I've thrown more characters from Teen Wolf into the flashbacks


	5. The last beacon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is running out for Isaac, Lydia, and Scott to light all the beacons

Isaac cursed loudly and ran to the edge of the bridge to look down at the water. It was dark. He then followed Lydia’s pointing finger to the pitches and saw that the thin pencil of light that had once come out of the rugby goal was dimmer and it hardly reached the clouds above.

“What are we going to do?” Cam asked. “I thought you said that you had lit the torch here!”

“We did. Somehow when the flame of the torch died the strength of the beacons diminished,” Lydia guessed, trying to think.

“What are we supposed to do now? Have we failed?”

“No,” Scott said with determination. “We go back to the first beacon and we light the torch. Then we make it to the sports fields and the bridge and the abbey in time.”

“What about the last one?” Cam seemed to remember that there were five clues and they had not cracked the last one about the daughter.

“We’ll sort it, so we better think quick,” he concluded with a smirk. “And we’re going to need the car.”

Five minutes later they had made it back to the Werewolf’s Arms, where they quickly jumped in Lydia’s car. Driving at high speed in the snow-covered narrow country lanes was difficult enough without Isaac and Lydia arguing about what the best route was, but Cam (who was behind the wheel) was used to his brother and his girlfriend’s antics. He took them all the way to the end of the allotment lane, and then they threw the doors open.

“You guys run up that hill and light the torch,” Camden instructed. “I’ll turn the car around and meet you here so we can get you to the rugby club.”

“With a flame in the car?!” Lydia objected.

“We’ll sort that out _later_!” Scott said, his bat at the ready and running up the snow-covered path. “Now hurry!”

Running up the hill had been difficult the first time, but now, with the added time pressure, the ascent was even more strenuous. They had to be careful not to slip, they had to keep an eye open lest they tripped, and they had to be aware of winter shadows attacking them again. On top of everything, the beacon of the sports fields had died by the time they were half-way up, and the one at the summit was beginning to dim down.

Scott, however, never gave up. With constant words of encouragement and by walking besides his friends he inspired them to keep up the pace. He did not need to remind them that the fate of the world was in their hands, they just needed to know that Scott believed in them – that together they could do it.

“That sounds all very cheesy,” Isaac said as he tried to stop huffing.

But the American just gave him a sly smirk and offered his hand. “Come on, Isaac,” he insisted, and Isaac could have melted, but he took his hand and, together, they kept on running.

Eventually they made it to the top without any shadow interruptions, but Lydia stopped.

“Are we sure about this?”

“There’s only one way of finding out,” Isaac cocked his head as he shrugged. Then the redhead brought the dead torch to the base of the prehistoric monument and, in an instant, the runed staff caught on fire. At the same time, the beacon of the cairn redoubled its intensity, shining even brighter and warmer.

The three friends smiled at each other for a short instant.

“That definitely did the trick,” Scott said, sniffling a bit in the cold air and putting his arms around Isaac’s and Lydia’s shoulders, squeezing them playfully. “Now for the other four.”

Lydia and Isaac were tired and out of breath, but the mission was important and Scott’s energy was contagious, so with the bats ready to defend the torch from the inevitable attack of the winter shadows, they descended (for the second time that night) the path from the hilltop to the allotment gate.

As expected, two hundred metres away from the gate they heard the unmistakable screech of the dark creatures, emerging from the crevices of the hedges.

“I’ll hold them,” Scott said, tightening the grip on his bat and turning around. “I’ll hold them here for as long as I can and will see you at the bridge!”

“Are you insane!” Isaac stopped, dead in his tracks and suddenly panicking. “You’re not staying _behind_ , with those—”

His plea was interrupted by a car horn.

“Lydia! Isaac!” Camden was shouting at them. They could see the car lights, and they guessed that Isaac’s brother had seen the light of the torch coming down the hill only to stop.

“GO!” Scott insisted, and Lydia grabbed Isaac by the elbow and pulled him away as Scott went forward to hold the winter shadows with his bat.

It took all of Isaac’s will to let Lydia drag him. But then he decided against it; he suddenly felt the urge to stay with Scott and keep him safe. So when Lydia eventually let go of him he turned around and charged with his bat high up to help Scott.

The American was surrounded by the two winter shadows, which he could only and barely fend off with wide swings of his rune bat. They were not sure if the creatures could be killed, but the hissing noise they made whenever the wood touched them at least indicated that they were not best pleased. When he got close enough, Isaac yelled loudly and batted in a wide upwards arch that swished through one of the shadow creatures, which made a noise of excruciating pain. The other shadow seemed to recoil, and that was all the space Isaac needed to grab Scott’s collar and pull him away to the car.

“What are you doing?”

“Not leaving you behind, mate,” Isaac said angrily as they both ran towards the car. “Not now, not ever.”

Camden and Lydia shouted at them to hurry and, when the disaster duo eventually made it into the back of the car, they spent the best part of the drive to the sports fields yelling at them about being irresponsible, and ‘what were you thinking’ and other similar reprimands that had more of fear and worry than they had of real anger. Scott and Isaac, meanwhile, looked at each other and stifled an adrenaline-fuelled laughter as their hearts calmed down to a normal beat.

Isaac surprised himself by extending his hand across to Scott, and the American, with only the tiniest of smiles, took it and squeezed it.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

Lydia decided to take no further chances, so when they got to the sports fields, she told Cam to take them around the back way so they could drive straight onto the pitch, where Lydia was able to light the goal post beacon without getting out of the car. Driving to the bridge was also simple enough, although this time Cam accompanied Isaac down to the rocks, bat at the ready, to keep his brother safe. Lighting the third beacon posed no problems this time, and the Lahey brothers were back in the car with only their boots wet from wading the river.

It was just after half-past five when they drove off to the ruins of the abbey, which were more of a public park littered with stone arches, standing pillars, and crumbled walls than anything else.

“How do you know it’s in the abbey,” Camden asked. “The clue you told me was about stacks. Can’t they be like haystacks?”

“Library stacks,” Scott explained, and Cam frowned.

“A, that’s tenuous; B, there isn’t a library in Bleiton,” Cam insisted. “And C, how does that relate to that circle-with-a-stick symbol?”

“Always so helpful, Cam. Honestly…” Isaac groaned at his brother.

“But once there was,” Lydia added with forced and calculated calm; trying to keep the torch inside her car without burning anything was a difficult task. “Besides, from the ruins of the old abbey you can see the bridge, and if we take the river as a symmetry axis, they are located in the mirror position to the sports fields.”

Camden looked at her blankly for a second with an arched eyebrow, not really convinced by the explanation.

“It’s easier to visualise with a map in front of you,” Scott offered.

“Oh, yeah. Check that out. They ripped a map off the walls!” Isaac suddenly remembered. “They also painted all over it.”

Scott and Lydia snorted in laughter, but Isaac did not find it that funny.

“But the symbol?” Cam insisted.

“When we get to the abbey, just keep your eyes open.”

“Oh, great…”

They parked as close as they could to the ruins, which under the snow and with the uneven orange glow of the flickering torch were far scarier than Isaac remembered. Walking slowly and together, they reached the first walls, and Scott carefully put his gloved hand on the mortared stones. From where he stood the remains of the abbey looked almost like a maze or a labyrinth of walls and arches that had once made sense.

“Where would the library be?” he asked, and his breath turned into mist in the cold air. The air was moving and turning into a chilling breeze that was slowly pushing the clouds away.

“I think this is the nave,” Lydia explained. “Behind those walls would have been the cloister. So somewhere there?”

“So we’re looking for a library that is not there, marked by a symbol which we do not know the meaning of. Have I got it right?” Isaac asked cocking his head and zipping up his fleece. He was met with three unimpressed glares. “Yep. Got it right then.”

“There should be a glowing sign,” Scott reminded them. “Just like with the other beacons.”

“Where’s that badger when you need him…?” Isaac said with a smile, walking past Scott and casually brushing their shoulders together on his way to the far end of the ruins.

The four of them spent a long while walking around the ruins of the abbey, looking for anything that could remotely have been a library. At the same time, either Scott or Isaac had to stand by Lydia in case the winter shadows returned.

It was well after six in the morning when the wind finally blew all the clouds away. On a moonless night, and without the dim reflected light of the clouds, the darkness was even deeper, and the odd night glow of the snow even more unsettling.

“Any luck, anyone?” Cam asked as he kicked some snow away. They had walked in so many circles that most of the snow was now crushed under their footprints.

“Nothing yet,” Isaac said, slightly deflated. “Are we sure we got this clue right?”

“It _has_ to be,” Lydia insisted, the torch illuminating around her. “We can see all the other three beacons from here… Stacks… It makes _sense_.”

Scott, who was with Lydia with his bat ready, turned around and bit his lip. He could see the bright light shining through the river and the two pillars of light at the hill top and the pitches. But what else could ‘stacks’ mean? Had they got it completely wrong? They had looked on the stones; they had looked under the arches; they even had been kicking snow away to look at the flagstones. But they had found nothing.

What was perhaps more disconcerting was that the shadow creatures had not appeared. They had not tried to stop them from entering the abbey grounds and had not jumped at them when they looked behind every dark corner.

And it was getting _colder_.

Isaac knew that it was always colder before sunrise, because it was the moment when the atmosphere had been without sunlight for the longest and had lost most of the heat away. But that day, of all possible days, and considering their mission, the pre-dawn chill felt unnatural.

“We better hurry up.”

“We better start thinking of alternative locations,” Cam added.

“No, it has to be _here_ ,” Lydia insisted, getting increasingly frustrated by the minute. “It only makes sense if it’s here in the abbey!”

Scott tried to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off and brusquely handed the torch to the American before storming away towards the car. Cam rolled his eyes and walked after his girlfriend.

“You two think fast,” he said as he passed Scott and his brother. “Because I know a handful of places with haystacks.”

Isaac and Scott were left alone, standing next to each other. The American looked up at Isaac with worried eyes, hoping that his friend would have an answer, but the blond could only give him a half-smile. Scott really wanted to step closer and throw his arms around him. He could only think how at that very moment Isaac could make everything seem easier, as he usually did – only that this time he _needed_ the reassuring contact. With a magic bat in one hand and the torch of summer in the other it was a bit difficult to initiate that, anyways, but Isaac surprised him by being the one who inched closer and gently nudged him with the elbow. When Scott looked up again Isaac was all blue eyes and a small but warm smile.

“We’ll sort this out. I trust you, Scott. I know you’ll figure it out in the end.”

Scott chuckled and he rested his head against Isaac’s shoulder, only for his friend to throw his free arm around him giving him a much-needed half-cuddle.

“What do you think we’re getting wrong?” Scott asked, very clearly snuggling himself into Isaac’s embrace.

“I don’t know… My brother insists that the symbol must mean something, like it did with the aitch and the bridge. But here? I’m not sure…”

“Maybe it’s there, but we just can’t see it…”

Then Isaac stiffened and gasped.

“You’re a genius!” he said, squeezing Scott tighter and planting an unexpected kiss on his hair. “Come, I know,” and with that he ran towards the car, pulling Scott along and shouting. “Cam! Lydia! Quick!”

They gathered around Isaac, who led them to a corner of the meadows around the abbey, away from the actual ruins.

“What’s going on?” Lydia asked, but Isaac just smirked. She looked at Scott, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“We’re not seeing the symbol, because we’re too close,” Isaac explained as he turned to face the abbey. He then closed one eye and stuck his tongue out as he walked slowly sideways.

“Your brother has lost it,” Lydia told Cam.

“Oh no, he’s been like this for a while.”

“No, don’t you see? We didn’t have the right perspective. Scott come here and give the bat and the torch to Lydia,” Isaac said, high in excitement. “What do you see from here?”

Scott did as he was told and, only slightly flustered, replied.

“The abbey…?”

“And a bit more detail?”

“I don’t know Isaac? The pillars, the arches, the walls…”

“Zac,” Cam said with impatience. “You’re the one who convinced me that we were in a hurry.”

“I _know_!” he beamed at his brother. “But we weren’t seeing the whole picture! Okay, Scott: now hold tight and don’t wiggle.”

“What are you— _woah!_ ”

Before Scott could finish his question, Isaac had crouched behind him, squeezed his head in between Scott’s legs and, with a whoomph, lifted him up. It took him a couple of seconds of flailing his arms to get his balance right until he was stable.

“What do you see?” Isaac said with a strained voice. “And hurry up because you’re not that light…”

“The abbey? No, _wait_. I see it!” Scott chuckled. “I see it! Those two pillars, and that broken wall and that far arch from here look like the symbol! A circle with a dangly bit!”

“Very poetically put, Scott,” Lydia, who was holding the torch again, smirked.

“Wait—there! It’s glowing green! The beacon!”

“What? Where?!”

“There’s a… a… a rock? A pedestal? Something _behind_ the abbey. From here it seems it fits right in the centre of the circle. Can you see it?”

Cam and Lydia moved around until they found an angle from which they could see a squared rock beyond the ruins that none of them had paid much attention to.

“Yes,” Lydia said with a big smile. “I see it!!”

“Then bloody run there,” Isaac told her and his brother. “Just run! Leave us a bat and we’ll be right behind.”

Camden and Lydia broke into a sprint as Isaac squatted back down and let Scott jump off, back on the ground.

“Isaac, you lifted me?” he asked with a giddy smile.

“Yeah, well, grab that bat,” Isaac might have blushed, but Scott could not see properly. “Let’s go help them.”

Once they reached the edge of the ruins, the screech of the winter shadows was heard again, piercing their ears, so loud and so dissonant that they could not tell where it was coming from.

“Keep running!” Scott yelled at Cam and Lydia when they turned around to look at them.

“If they get close just clobber them with the bat!” Isaac added.

They were jumping over the fallen walls and zigzagging around the pillars when the screeches echoed again, impossibly louder and angrier this time. Isaac caught a dark glimpse at the edge of his vision and then he lost it.

“They’re around!”

Just as he warned his friends, a winter shadow charged into Lydia, throwing her into Cam, and both tripped on each other and fell on the snow. Thankfully Scott and Isaac were not that far behind. While Scott poked and slashed with the bat at the shadow, Isaac picked up the torch and handed it over to Lydia.

“Come on, I’ve got your back.”

She looked at Cam, who stood up and went to help Scott against the shadow.

“No time for that,” he insisted. “We run now!”

Lydia’s face set and she was off. She and Isaac ran side by side, feeling the cold wind and the high-pitch screech of the winter shadows approaching. Far behind them, Scott cried in pain and Cam shouted at them to hurry. Isaac grabbed Lydia’s hand and, together they reached the ivy- and snow-covered pedestal, where the symbol glowed intensely. From under the ground they could sense a foreboding rumble, almost like an earthquake.

And just as they felt the chill of a claw napping their skin, they pressed the torch against the sign.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

_When they opened their eyes, Scott, Lydia and Isaac looked around in confusion, because they were at the edge of a desert. Behind them there was a ludicrously wide river with green banks and tilled fields. There were large temples of polished stone framed by obelisks that towered above all other buildings The only indications that they were in a winter solstice in the past were the dark clouds and the violent wind that swept the harsh, reddish sand. Isaac immediately noticed that Camden was not_ there _with them._

_In front of them were, again, three chosen ones. Carrying the torch was a short black man wearing nothing but a weird skirt-like piece of clothing. He was running towards a stone covered in carved hieroglyphics, one of which glowed like the runes of all the other beacons. Keeping an eye around him were a blond young man in a white tunic and a bronze cuirass and a woman with auburn hair and flat gold jewels around her neck. Both of them were holding clubs with scarab motifs._

_For once there did not seem to be any shadows around, which made the frozen scene they were watching ever more unsettling – deep inside they knew that the winter shadows were somewhere there, waiting. And they did not have a way to warn them._

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

“Isaac!” Camden shouted as he shook him by the shoulders.

“What’s wrong?”

“You three collapsed when that thing burst into flames!” this was the most worried he had seen his brother in a long while. That scared Isaac.

“How long have we been out?” Lydia said as she observed the two Laheys.

“A couple of seconds.”

“Aren’t you over reacting?”

Cam made a weird noise in the back of his throat as he rolled his eyes and pushed his brother back into the snow. Behind him came Scott, who gave him his hand and lifted him up.

“Okay, in other news, have you lot thought about the fifth clue?” Camden asked once they were all standing.

“You’re not going to admire the beacon of summer light?” Isaac arched an eyebrow, teasing his brother as he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the stone pedestal that was sending a pillar of light and fire into the pre-dawn sky.

“I’m currently more worried about that,” he replied, pointing, in turn, towards the village. The church bell began to toll, marking seven in the morning. A lonely tractor was already heading into the fields, and more lights could be seen lit in the houses. “We’re running out of time.”

“Okay,” Lydia said, stepping firmly onto the snow. “Let’s think.”

“They shine through the water, and flame up the stacks; They’re lit on the daughter to bring the sun back,” Scott said aloud. “And then it had this weird inverted euro sign.”

“The symbols are important,” Lydia continued. “What is that sign?”

“I know,” Camden surprised everyone. “That’s sanpi.”

Lydia, Scott, and Isaac looked at Camden with incredulity.

“Sanpi.”

“Yeah,” he said with the trademarked Lahey smug grin. “Last letter of the archaic Greek alphabet. It’s a killer in the pub quiz,” he admitted. Cam ran the Werewolf’s Arms weekly pub quiz, which was one of the main social events of Bleiton and, to Camden’s credit, it was surprisingly challenging. “It also signified nine hundred.”

“And how does that help us?”

“I already answered a question.”

“Don’t you two start,” Lydia warned them. “That’s our only lead so far. Although how does that relate to the daughter?”

“Is there a local hill or something that is named after a daughter?” Scott looked at Lydia.

“Not that I know of.”

“And whose daughter does it mean?” Isaac offered. “Perhaps that’s what we’re missing. Does sanpi have a daughter?”

They thought and thought, argued about possibilities, proposing and disproving hypotheses that were growing wilder and wilder as the hour got later and later. The eastern sky began to turn a lighter hue of blue and, to make things worse, the shadow creatures seemed to be circling them and cackling; as if mocking them and gloating at their incompetence.

Cam and Lydia were getting tense and frustrated. Isaac was completely mindblocked, looking at his brother and hoping he could come with the final answer. Scott was the one who was sitting quietly on one of the low walls, tapping the floor with his boot and unconsciously rubbing the bicep where Isaac knew he had a two-band tattoo.

Then, slowly, Scott stood up, and his friends fell silent when they saw his glare lost in the distance.

“You okay, Scott?”

“I have an idea.”

“Well,” Camden said, checking his watch – it was quarter past seven. “At this time anything goes.”

“None of the other symbols were chosen for their intrinsic meaning. The aitch was the rugby posts, the bar with the squiggles was the bridge. What if it is something that looks like that?”

“And what looks like a curved line with two hanging straight lines?” Lydia asked with sincere curiosity and clearly approving of this line of enquiry.

“…”

“Scott?”

“I’m thinking…” the American asked for a second. “Something that’s bent and that is a daughter.”

“An old lady with a walking stick,” Isaac offered. “That’s like Oedipus with the sphinx’s riddle... But with a woman.”

“We can’t just set any old lady on fire.”

Suddenly Scott’s face changed into a mask of surprise and then into a big grin. His euphoria was contagious, even if he had not explained anything yet.

“What Scott? Tell us!”

“The tree!”

“What tree?”

The winter shadows that had lurked in the corners beyond the light of the fourth beacon screeched angrily and they disappeared into the night.

“I’ll take that as a sign?” Cam offered. “But what tree?”

“The tree, the _tree_!” Scott insisted. “Let’s get to the car!”

Scott raced back to the car and his three friends followed.

“In the first vision we saw the priestess setting the last beacon on fire,” he explained as they jogged. “Then when we were at the glade the badger sett was dug against an ancient, curving tree.”

“A tree which had silver spirals, just like the one in the vision,” Lydia agreed when they got to the car.

“What has that got to do with a daughter?” Isaac still did not understand.

“The tree!” Scott insisted while opening the door. “It’s the same tree – or, rather, it is a descendant of that first tree.”

“Scott,” Isaac insisted and stood outside the car, resting the bat on the roof. “Look at the sky, we haven’t got much time, and I don’t want to be unhelpful, but we need to be one-million percent sure that this is it.”

“It can’t be the same tree,” Lydia chipped in, understanding perfectly where Scott was going. The last glaciation finished over eight thousand years ago. But it could be a descendant of that tree, a _daughter_ tree.”

Isaac stood there thinking for a few more seconds. He wanted to believe his friends, but he wanted to be absolutely certain.

“Zac,” Cam rolled his eyes. “I am perfectly happy with that explanation. You said it yourself, we’re against the clock here. Can’t we just go?”

“Fine,” Isaac gave up, and Scott beamed at him, overflowing with joy. That made Isaac feel a lot better.

“Where’s that sett then?” Cam asked when they were all in the car. But then Scott, Lydia and Isaac looked at each other. “You don’t know where it is?!”

“Not per se…” Isaac poked his head from the back in between the two front seats. “But take us to the pub and I can remember where we went from there.”

“You woke up Mrs Rose—” Lydia said, but Isaac interrupted her with a mutter.

“That old cow…”

“Go to the bed and breakfast and take the turn up to Liam’s field,” Lydia remembered. “There’s where we jumped the gate.”

“Right-o,” Cam put the car into gear and drove off.

It was still dark, but dawn was clearly approaching. Far in the East, the light blue was beginning to turn purple. They crossed the bridge and they saw the village slowly waking up, even in the gloom. When they got to the bed and breakfast, Cam was ready to take a left when suddenly the car died. They lost transmission, the lights went off, the breaks did not work. The momentum they had accumulated pushed them on the snowy tarmac until the car hit a wall. Lydia had to manoeuvre away from the torch before she burnt her hair, but the upholstery of the glove compartment was not that lucky.

“Damn it!” Cam shouted. But before anyone else could say anything, one of the winter shadows emerged from under the now-dented bonnet before disappearing with a screech into the shadowy corners of the building. “You three leg it to the sett,” he instructed. “You’re the chosen ones with the magic weapons. I’ll be right behind you.”

Isaac and Scott nodded, and Lydia pulled him in for a quick kiss, before all three of them disappeared into the snowy streets. Meanwhile, Cam got out of the car to see what the shadow creatures could have done. He was tightening his coat when he saw a woman standing right behind him.

“Ah! Jesus. Mrs Rose! You scared me there.”

“Hello, mister publican,” she said with a steaming cup of tea in her hand. She might have just walked out of her kitchen, but she was dressed to the nines in rather impressive bedwear. “It is bad for me to say this because I am not one prone to gossiping, but I think that someone might have had an early drop today?”

“Mrs Rose, I was helping my brother and his friends and I slid in the snow,” he explained vaguely. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“I think your dear brother and his kitchen-skilled paramour need more than a romantic sunrise in the snow. John!” she suddenly shouted. “We’re going to need the Valentine suite for our fellow American and his charming chum.”

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

Isaac, Lydia, and Scott were once again running up the snow-covered fields. If they had looked carefully, they could have seen their own footprints from when they chased the badger and from when they fled the winter shadows.

“How much time have we got?” Isaac asked when he saw that the purple light was warming up to red.

“Not enough,” Scott said before clenching his jaw and sprinting as fast as he could.

“We’re nearly there,” Lydia huffed, sweating as they ran uphill in the snow. “The sett was around that far hedge.”

“I’ll sprint ahead,” Isaac decided to put his longer legs to good use. “Those shadows are likely waiting for us again. Don’t wait for me.”

Little by little Isaac increased the distance between him and his friends, although Scott and Lydia never really lagged too far behind. At least that meant that when the shadow creatures attacked, they had someone to keep them busy while Lydia and Scott ran around the fight.

“Come on, Lyds. We’re nearly there,” Scott cheered her. The gap through the hedge was now clearly visible. Beyond it they knew there was the wooded area and the glade with the badger sett.

But behind them they heard Isaac scream in pain, and they turned around in panic only to see Isaac down on his knees in the snow while the shadow figure charged at them.

“Keep running!” Isaac ordered, but there was no denying that it sounded as if he was in pain. “Light the beacon!”

Against his instincts, Scott squared his shoulders and kept running ahead, Lydia and the torch close by her side. When they made it into the trees the unnatural screeches of the winter shadows were loud and too close for comfort.

“There!” Lydia pointed. “The tree – and it’s glowing!”

The red light that flooded the trees was slowly turning orange, and Scott and Lydia used their last strength to make it across the trees to the clearing. From the undergrowth to their right a badger appeared suddenly, but while Bramley had been full of energy and even playful earlier that night, now he was slow, clumsy, and not completely solid.

A winter shadow then fell from the branches, its screech full of fury and despair. Scott had to push Lydia forward and he put the bat in between them and the cold, winter demon. The winter shadow, however, did not care about the agony the bat caused it, and it tried to claw at Scott and Lydia, even if the wood was hissing and burning through its ethereal body.

Eventually, Scott was forced down on the ground, just as the snow began to glow with golden yellow light. He could see the dark claw reaching towards Lydia’s back, but he could not judge how close they were to the sett or to the beacon.

Then time slowed down.

At almost the same instant, Scott saw not the sunglow that made dawn warm and colourful, but a true sunbeam illuminating the mistletoe that grew on the branches above him. Scott also saw a bat covered in runes hit the shadow creature in its back. At the other end of the bat he saw Isaac, his face a mask of anger. Scott also saw an explosion of light first green and silver, then bright yellow, followed by a shockwave of pleasant heat and, finally, a whoosh.

Then everything faded to white.

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

_Isaac, Lydia, and Scott were standing just outside a circle of blue-grey stones. Two pairs of larger monoliths towered above the rest at diametrically opposed ends of the stone circle. In the middle there was a large pyre that glowed silver, green, yellow, and orange. The sun had just risen and was shining precisely in between the gaps of the upright stones and through the bonfire._

_Two tall twins covered in blue tattoos and wearing what seemed ceremonial antlers on their heads and wolfskins on their shoulders were throwing two runed spears into the pyre. Meanwhile, a tan-skinned woman with a necklace of shells and amber and ochre paint on her face, carefully set down a dying torch into a hole in the ground._

_Around them, the three friends now could see thousands and thousands of people, each wearing different clothes from every single period. They saw the trio that had been in the Blitz, the ones from Egypt, the ones from Japan, even the pirates. Scott, Lydia and Isaac were now aware that they were all waiting for them, inviting them into the circle of stones, and it felt right._

_The three friends held their hands and, after a few quick nods, they stepped into the circle, and the other guardians of the summer flame welcomed them as family._

**¤ -- H ꬸ ϙ -- ϡ**

When Scott opened his eyes, he immediately noticed that the badger sett was no longer a massive pillar of warmth and light that shot into the sky. The old tree had lost its runes, the beacon was no more. However, there was something in the air: the slightest hint of a sensation he could not name but. Maybe it was the sunbeams that shone through the branches and that glowed on the snow; maybe it was the afterglow of the beacon that was burnt into his retinas.

Maybe it was the fact that Isaac was lying flat on him and that the winter shadow had disappeared.

Isaac shook his head and pushed himself up on his elbows, still on top of Scott. He immediately realised where he was and was about to roll over, but Scott put his hands on his elbows and kept him there. Isaac did not complain.

“We did it!” Scott said with a big smile. “We lit the last beacon, and we were in that meeting with, like, all the other torch people, and—” Scott was overexcited. He was speaking fast, blurting all his thoughts about their adventure with a big grin.

Isaac was not really paying attention to what he was saying, he was just lost in Scott, who was was beaming like a little sun. Then he noticed that Scott had somehow got snow on his hair, and he carefully brushed it away, slowly bringing his hand around his face, leaving it on Scott’s cheek.

“What?” the American asked, still smiling, his brown eyes fixed in Isaac’s blue ones.

“You,” Isaac said simply, and he leant down and kissed him. He felt Scott’s surprise disappear as his lips curled into a smile before he began to return the kisses eagerly. It was not long until Scott had wrapped his arms around Isaac’s midriff and pulled him down to him, making them roll in the snow.

A couple of seconds later they were interrupted by a snowball that hit both of their’ faces.

“No one is happier for you two than me,” Lydia said with a smirk. “It only took an entire night of trying to save the world for you to finally do something,” she continued. Isaac and Scott were blushing as they smiled, but they made no attempt to push away from each other. “But it’s been a very long night and we should go find your brother and head home.”

Isaac rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Scott, kissing him needily, trying to feel him through their thick winter clothes, but Lydia hit them with another sniper-accurate snowball.

“Okay, okay!” Isaac said putting his hand up. “We’re going.”

They both stood up and brushed the snow off their clothes. Soon Lydia walked, standing in between the two of them and offering her arms. Isaac and Scott chuckled, the former hanging his head and shaking it, the latter biting his lip and hiding his face in his free hand.

And the three friends, arms linked, walked down the snow-covered hill, one last time. Anyone could save the world and defeat Winter for another year, but few were the chances when they could have a night-long quest with their best friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was it! I hope you liked it!
> 
> I may still write a short epilogue, but that'll come next week. Have a merry Christmas everyone, or else happy solstice and celebrate the rebirth of the sun!


End file.
